Wednesday July 28, 2021
Kremlin clearly contradicts this
Biden: “Russia only has nuclear weapons”
According to US President Biden, his Russian counterpart Putin is in trouble because Russia cannot rely on anything other than nuclear weapons. A Kremlin spokesman has now called this “fundamentally wrong”. Meanwhile, representatives from both countries came together again in Geneva.
US President Joe Biden has verbally attacked Russian President Vladimir Putin in view of the growing number of cyberattacks. Putin has “a real problem, he is at the head of an economy that has nuclear weapons and nothing else,” said Biden during a visit to the headquarters of US intelligence coordinator Avril Haines. “He knows he’s in trouble, which makes him even more dangerous in my eyes.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov replied that the US president was “fundamentally wrong”. Russia is a “very responsible nuclear power”. His country has nuclear weapons and the oil and gas sector, “but to say that Russia has nothing else is fundamentally wrong,” said Peskov. Biden also accused the Kremlin of meddling in the US congressional election next year by spreading false information. “Look at what Russia is already doing about the 2022 elections and disinformation,” Biden said. “That is a clear violation of our sovereignty.”
Regarding the problem of cyber attacks, for which Washington blames Russia, among others, Biden chose sharp words: If the United States is involved in “a real war with a great power, it will be the result of a cyber attack”. In the fall of 2022, mid-term congressional elections will take place in the United States, with all seats in the House of Representatives and one-third of the seats in the Senate standing for election. The White House recently asked Russia repeatedly to stop cyberattacks attributed to Russian hackers. Moscow rejects any responsibility.
The USA and Russia are talking again about disarmament
While Biden attacked his Russian colleague, high-level talks between both sides about arms control were taking place in Geneva. The meeting, which was attended by US Deputy Foreign Minister Wendy Sherman and her Russian colleague Sergei Riabkov, is a continuation of the dialogue that Biden and Putin also started in Geneva last month. Kremlin spokesman Peskov called the talks a “positive sign”. When the date was announced, the US State Department announced: “Through this dialogue we are trying to lay the foundation for future arms control measures and steps to reduce risk.” Riabkov told Russian news outlets the talks would help Moscow “understand how serious our US counterparts are in achieving a focused, energetic dialogue on strategic stability.”
The relationship between Washington and Moscow is extremely tense. The deterioration in relations had already started during the tenure of former US President Donald Trump, although many critics accused him of being too lenient towards Putin. Tensions have intensified since Biden took office. In addition to the issue of cybercrime, relations between the two countries are primarily burdened by accusations of election manipulation and the Ukraine conflict.
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